Games help (A Reflection of journal)

Journal title:  Design research in Mathematics Education: Indonesian Traditional Games as Preliminaries in Learning Measurement of Length ByAryadiWijaya

As show in its title, this journal was a design research or a developmental research especially in Mathematics Education area whilst using RME as its instructional theory. This research mainly concern in one of students’ ability that is measurement as one of mathematics material in Indonesian’s SD N Percobaan 2 Yogyakarta.

kindergartens and primary schools. However, this research was conducted in grade 2 while the try out was held in grade 1.

The writer argue that measurement is taught directly in formal level for traditional education approach, thus make those students having difficulty in understanding the fundamental concept of measurement. Furthermore this writer say that even if the students are properly use the measurement devices such as ruler, it do not guarantee the understanding of the meaning behind measuring itself. That is why the researcher propose this research to develop an instructional activity which could improve students’ ability and understanding to mastering the fundamental concept of measurement

Therefore, to reach the goal an activity preferable the one that students already know are needed to make them experience and understand what the measurement really is. The researcher chose two traditional games which is well known among the students as activities to introduce the concept of measuring. Those activities are “gundu” and “benthik”.

"gundu" games

“Gundu” is a marbles game while “Benthik” is a stick game. The similarity between the two which made the researcher to use it as a preliminaries in teaching and learning is the way the player of those games to determine the winner. Both games need to measure the distance of the games object (marbles or stick) by using a unit such as span or a particular stick (in “benthik”). The researcher saw that this non-standard measuring process can be potentially used to introduce the basic concept of measurement that is unit iteration and identical unit.

"benthik" games

This research’s instruction arranged in a hypothetical learning trajectory which is divided in four steps. First, the researcher began the activities by playing particular traditional games as stated above which content unit usage and the iteration. Second, the activity was student measure the length of pencil using blank ruler, a ruler which does not have the numbers in it but only the strips remain. The next activity was the students use the normal ruler with the numbers and strips printed in it to measure the pencil’s length. The last activity was measuring the length, however instead of normal, broken ruler was being used.

As result, in the first activity as being conjectured, students got different measurement result by using their paces/steps, thus led the students to conflict which one is correct or simply put why they got the different result. In the end, after discussion the student would understand the result of measurement are related to the size of the unit.

While, in measurement activity where blank ruler used, most of those students did not have difficulty using it, even most of them were able to get the exact length of the object they measured. There are four strategies which was plausibly used to get such result. Some students counted the number of stripes and started counting from 1, while some others did the same but counted from 0 even there were students who started the counting from the second stripes. On the other hand there were some students instead of counting the stripes, they counted the number of spaces between the stripes.

When using normal ruler all students did not encounter any difficulties. It could be because all of them directly looked at the objects’ edges to get the exact measurement result. However, students tended to have difficulties when the broken ruler was used even after they were able to measure the object using the blank ruler of which the broken ruler has the same principle.

Almost all of the students, including they who counted the gaps between spaces in previous activity, directly looked at the number at the end of the object and decided that was the answer. In addition to that strategy, there were two more strategies likely to be used by students. First, some students counted the stripes but started from 1. However, in the last strategy instead of 1 students counted the stripes started from 0.

That last strategy emerged as the result of the discussion among students when they compared the measurement result of an object using the normal ruler and the broken one. There were several result of the discussion, but these last strategy offered by Ofar as result of the observation and discussion.

Researcher states that this last activity shows the fact students do not perceive the concept of any number can replace 0 as the starting point of measurement. Therefore, for concluding he gave some results which can be used as beneficial consideration when deciding in traditional games usage as preliminaries of teaching and learning of measurement. Not only that, the researcher have high expectation of the better understanding because of those activities after seeing the result comparison between the teaching learning process where the traditional games were used and the one which not use those games.

For closure, the researcher expected that Indonesian traditional games can be used as tools to transfer the concept of measurement from non-standard to the standard one.

I personally believe that the research Aryadi did was very great. Making traditional games that the children really know about should make the teacher realize that the knowledge is built from things that the students already know or aware of. Those games help the student to understand more about the material they get and in time make the students realize that mathematics is not just a school material which need to be memorized but an applicative knowledge that students could use in daily live.